We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence.
More Quotes from Annie Dillard:
There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable.Annie Dillard
People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subject inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.
Annie Dillard
Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block.
Annie Dillard
I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too.
Annie Dillard
The body of literature, with its limits and edges, exists outside some people and inside others. Only after the writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature.
Annie Dillard
As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.
Annie Dillard
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Based on Topics: Beauty Quotes, Death & Dying Quotes, Mystery Quotes, Violence QuotesThus they have an idol that they petition for victory in war; another for success in their labors; and so for everything in which they seek or desire prosperity, they have their idols, which they honor and serve.
Hernando Cortes
The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.
Jean Cocteau
If, in a few months, I'm only number 8 or number 10 in the world, I'll have to look at what off-the-court work I can do. I will need to do something if I want to be number 1.
John McEnroe